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The present study explored the Ecuadorian secondary school teachers' beliefs about teaching EFL in the context of national curriculum reform. The data comprised in-depth interviews with 16 teachers from 14 public secondary schools in Ecuador. The interviews were semi-structured, and they were guided by a set of questions probing into the teachers’ beliefs about instructional design, assessment, teaching materials, and learning activities. Qualitative analysis of the interview transcripts revealed some interesting insights into the Ecuadorian teachers' beliefs and reported practice. The findings showed that the teachers were positive about the principles and innovation in the new curriculum designed by the Ministry of Education. However, various contextual and practical constraints hindered the teachers from implementing the intended curriculum. These factors included large class size, a lack of teacher training and professional development, and the heavy load caused by compulsory extra-curriculum activities. Implications for EFL pedagogy and teacher professional development are discussed.

 

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Power is understood as a process exercised and negotiated in an English-as-a-foreign-language interaction. This article aims to fill the gaps of literature in researching the relationship between teachers' power and students’ learning behavior in Vietnamese classroom interaction as there was little research on how teachers’ use of power can exert educational effects on students, and which changes the way students acquire or learn in general and particularly language. The data came from an ethnographic approach, including audio-recording, classroom observation, and teacher interviews. By employing the tools of critical discourse analysis, the analyses bring together the view of the subject of the study with classroom power relations to give deep insights into the microlevel classroom discourse and the macrolevel of professional discourse (in this case, it is understood as pedagogical discourse). The findings show how power was negotiated over in different forms of classroom behavior. Besides, the discursive classroom practices reveal the relationship between classroom behavior norms that the teachers attempted to impose and the well-known student-centeredness. Implications have been worked out through a proposal of a classroom interaction structure where a constructivist learning environment or a classroom of happiness is aimed to create, which helps increase the learning potential and capacity of students.  
 

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This qualitative study examined the beliefs of Vietnamese primary teachers regarding writing instruction. The participants included 12 in-service teachers from five primary schools in a large city in Vietnam. The data consisted of in-depth semi-structured interviews. Qualitative analysis of the data showed several interesting insights into the teachers' beliefs about writing instruction for young learners and the challenges they faced in their classroom teaching. All the participating teachers believed that writing was very important for primary school learners, and teaching writing was one of the key tasks for primary school teachers. The teachers considered that students' lack of life experiences and creativeness was the most considerable challenge in teaching writing, but they faced several practical constraints in helping students overcome the difficulties. Notably, the teachers were supportive of methods to enhance the creativeness and emotions in students' writing, but they reported using model texts in teaching frequently. The socio-cultural contexts of teaching and learning were taken into account in the interpretation of the findings. This study is the first step to inform professional development programs and pedagogy to enhance the effectiveness of teaching writing skills to young learners at primary schools in Vietnam, and beyond.

 

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As a salt adsorbent, biochar could remove/isolate salt ions e.g. Na through physiochemical adsorption to mitigate the salinity of brackish water, but little is known about its magnitude and mechanisms. The current study aimed to examine the effects of biochar on: (1) Na-adsorptive capacity and mechanism and (2) Electrical Conductivity (EC) and K displacement. Six pyrolysis temperatures (250, 350, 450, 550, 650, and 750ºC) were applied to produce biochars from rice husk. The biochars were then used as adsorbents to adsorb Na from salty water varying in NaCl concentrations. The Langmuir isotherm Model (LMM) and Dubinin-Radushkevick isotherm Model (DRM) were used to quantify the dependence of adsorbed Na on Na concentration at equilibrium. The LMM quantification revealed that the maximum Na-adsorptive capacity of biochars increased from 25.8 to 67.8 (mg g^-1) upon increased temperatures. The EC was reduced and the K amount displaced from biochar was increased with an increase in pyrolysis temperature. The DRM quantification revealed that the Na-adsorptive mechanism was mainly a physical process. A significant relationship between the Na amount adsorbed and the K amount displaced from biochar suggested that the ion-exchange mechanism could co-exist. In brief, the findings indicated that the salinity of the brackish water could be significantly mitigated by the biochar treatment through mainly physical adsorption leading to a reduced EC and increased K: Na ratio.

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Matrix Metalloproteinase-9 (MMP9) degrades the Extracellular Matrix (ECM), participates in mammary gland remodeling, and inhibits mammary epithelial cell apoptosis in goats. To investigate the transcriptional regulatory mechanism of the MMP9 promoter region, we analyzed the expression pattern of MMP9 in dairy goats by qRT‒PCR and cloned the promoter region by PCR. Deletion analysis indicated that the MMP9 gene core promoter region was located upstream of the transcription start site in the -715 bp to -926 bp region. We predicted three Specificity protein 1 (Sp1) binding sites in the MMP9 core promoter region, and performed targeted mutations on these three sites. The c.1863 G> A mutation in the MMP9 gene increased the promoter transcriptional activity and may be associated with an additional Serum Response Factor (SRF) transcription factor-binding site. Association analysis revealed that c.1863 G> A was significantly associated with milk fat percentage in dairy goats, which was significantly higher in goats with the AG genotype (4.71±0.02%) than in goats with the GG genotype (4.61±0.05%). This study lays a foundation for subsequent analysis of the transcriptional regulatory mechanism of MMP9 and exploration of its biological functions.